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  DANTE’S INDIANA

  ALSO BY RANDY BOYAGODA

  Original Prin

  Beggar’s Feast

  Governor of the Northern Province

  Dante’s Indiana

  A NOVEL

  RANDY BOYAGODA

  A JOHN METCALF BOOK

  BIBLIOASIS

  WINDSOR, ONTARIO

  Copyright © Randy Boyagoda, 2021

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Dante’s Indiana / Randy Boyagoda.

  Names: Boyagoda, Randy, 1976- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210213272 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210213280 | ISBN 9781771964272 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771964289 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS8603.O9768 D36 2021 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  Edited by John Metcalf

  Copyedited by Emily Donaldson

  Cover designed by Michel Vrana

  Typeset by Vanessa Stauffer

  Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the financial support of the Government of Canada. Biblioasis also acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates.

  PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

  For Anna,

  my Virgil and Beatrice both,

  and for Mira, Olive, Ever, and Imogen,

  our stars.

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Acknowledgements

  “We made our way, along the brink …”

  —Dante, Purgatorio

  “‘The hearse—the second hearse!’ cried Ahab from the boat, ‘its wood could only be American!’”

  —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

  1

  RIDING THROUGH THE valley, I looked up and lost my way.

  From the ground, my bike beside me, I caught my breath and bent my legs. Nothing cracked or snapped or stung. I pushed up, on my elbows. It was midday in Toronto. Late November. A Thursday.

  People pedalled and jogged past. Families fanned out along the path with food bags and strollers and toddlers leashed at the wrist. A few people waved, to make sure that I was okay. I waved back. Loose dogs approached, curious, their tails whipping around. Their owners called out treats and punishments and they turned away from me. I slipped back down.

  I was alone in the city.

  I blinked a few times. Beyond the pencilled high branches, the heavens looked like the greywhite of rainwater in an empty swimming pool.

  I was alone in the city.

  The demon was still there. It was beside me. The creature squatted on a plinth wedged between the bike path and the murky river. It had bat wings and a dog face. The Thursday before, it hadn’t been here; I was certain of that, at least, and had stared at it for far too long. Mid-pedal past. My front wheel went off the path into a slurry of pea gravel. Small stones dug into my skin. Pushing into the earth made them go away. The ground was damp and forgiving.

  I looked at the gargoyle again. The battered creature must have been dumped out of some lately condo’d church. Smashed-up bramble and bush ended near its base, rutted lines of dried-out mud that led across the path and up to the main road. Tire tracks. Someone had driven it down from the city proper, unloaded it, right-side up, and left.

  A statement? A warning? A joke?

  Had I taken a wrong turn, higher up the path?

  If they were here with me, we wouldn’t lay down and blink and stare. We’d climb and call out and conquer.

  Molly left in July, with the children. To stay with her family for the summer. She took their winter clothes.

  “Leave you here?”

  The driver dropped me in front of the glass-boxed front of my old Catholic college. It was now a condominium and assisted-living complex called The New U.

  I walked through the airy vestibule built in front of the chipped-brick building. The old hardscape had been torn up and replaced by paving tiles; pitted and silver-grey, they gave off a sheen like old trophies and tea services and baby cups, spoons, shoes in which first steps were taken, decades ago.

  “Prin, has the condo board changed the rules and nobody told the guy who has to enforce them? Am I really going to let you go up the elevator with that bike, like that?” said Marcus.

  I went over to his desk. The monitors and phones and cardiac-arrest kits were concealed by slatted lengths of amber wood—warm like honey and candlelight, like honey in candlelight. The desk softened the rest of the building’s otherwise cold bright bare beginning.

  Marcus was a retired soldier. He lined the top of his desk with potted cactuses, a tribute to his late wife, and was beloved by the building’s residents for settling daily disputes about party-room bookings and guest-parking.

  “Where am I supposed to go then?” I said.

  Others were watching and listening. They were always in the lobby, fixed in their places like the unsecured umbrella stands. They carried tablets and e-readers, in case you asked any direct questions.

  Marcus tapped and checked a screen. He checked his watch.

  “Go to Underground 2. You might hop in the tub with your bike. You have about ten minutes before they start coming back from their dog walks. I’ll text you the code. Hurry up so you’re not ambushed.”

  I was too late.

  “So, what do you got there? Poodle-Harley mix?”

  The other dog-walkers laughed at the old man’s joke. I waited.

  When I eventually left the dog-washing room, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one waiting. The building’s elevators, programmed to reach each resident’s floor via face-recognition software, weren’t working. At every face, the screen flashed “The Terraces.”

  This had to be an error message.

  They all looked to me. I was the youngest resident in the building. I knew “computer.” I did have the code for the utility elevator, so I offered to bring everyone back to the lobby. Certain dogs didn’t get along. Multiple trips were necessary. I had to make each one. No one believed the code would work for anyone else. No one would chance a trip to The Terraces, the condominium’s medical wing.

  Thank yous were offered.

  Standing in the lobby, I looked through the condo’s glass facade. Traffic and the faces of people in traffic; behind them, above them, more condominiums. The sky was endlessly the same. As if grey clouds had worsted the heavens.

&nbsp
; “Overcast until evening, then cooler. The same’s in the forecast tomorrow,” said a voice from the unsecured umbrella stand.

  I had to leave the lobby.

  Four o’clock was too early for dinner.

  For the microwave.

  For pepperoncini or hot mustard on the reheated joint.

  2

  CLASSES WERE JUST getting out on The New U’s second floor. The condo’s test kitchen was at the far end of a hall that was lined with scholarly books arranged by binding colour.

  More than a year earlier, the college had announced it was shutting down—after its plan to open a satellite campus in the Middle East ended with its visiting delegation caught in a terrorist attack at the airport. Two people were killed—a Chinese real-estate developer and a university business consultant, my ex-girlfriend from graduate school. Two survived: the consultant’s assistant, a Chinese woman who had since become the condominium’s exclusive sales agent, and an English professor.

  I remembered very little about the attack.

  Flashes of light. Shattering. Footfall. Quiet voices in the dark.

  Secret voices.

  Not just mine.

  Smashing. Yelling, calling, screaming.

  A final brightness.

  Angry men and ringing phones and crying children. A bandage pressed against my bleeding forehead. A blanket that made me shiver. That made me realize I was shivering. Molly, on a phone held to my ear by a gloved hand, crying so hard it sounded like she was laughing. Finally asking her what was so funny. Forgiven that.

  I had been pensioned and granted emeritus status at the age of forty-one. And while our house was being renovated, I was given temporary use of a free unit in the building, where my divorced parents were also now living. They had quickly established themselves as major players.

  Which meant I wasn’t just that professor; I was also his son, her son, their son. The son.

  Wasn’t he also married to that sweet American girl? Didn’t they have all of those wonderful little girls? Where were they?

  I was spared direct questions.

  My parents must have told them something.

  Sins of the heart, sins of the mind, mouth, hands. Yes. Yes to all. But despair is the greatest sin of all. And so solo bike rides and daily dinnertime calls, it was just easier. It was just easier: isn’t this the surest commandment for any marriage well into its middle age? It doesn’t have to mean despair. We weren’t there yet.

  The other professors at the college were given two options: they could accept a modest buyout from the board and framed final blessing from Father-President, or they could accept a radically reduced salary, access presale pricing for their own units, and also free storage for their personal libraries—provided they offered lifelong learning seminars to fellow residents.

  I saw some of them now, in the hallway.

  “Prin? What are you doing here, Prin?” said one of my old colleagues.

  “Professor, is that an example of chiasmus?”

  She didn’t wait to answer her student’s question. She couldn’t. The momentum was too much. She kept pushing on to the elevator like her other exiting colleagues, surrounded by their personal libraries and by grey students asking detailed questions. They would continue with this, day after day, year after year, until they stopped receiving balance-owing statements from the college’s loan officer, who was now its only employee.

  I reached the end of the hallway, where the books changed from brown to green. The walls around the corner looked burnt orange. Fresh bread was baking. The test kitchen, one of the college’s original refectories, was quiet.

  The cooking class that my mother and Kareem, her newish, Muslim-ish second husband, were taking involved condo members sharing recipes and stories. Today, the class was led by an older Italian couple, hale and well-dressed. The man had the face of someone who worked with his hands. The woman was splendid. Cadmium hair, down to her shoulders. Her face glowed. Slipping in at the back of the room, I noticed it was shining with tears.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, everyone.”

  She turned to her husband, who held out his hands, smiling and looking sorry.

  Useless.

  “It’s just that, this recipe, it really brings me back, you know? But next year will be our fortieth, and we have seven grandchildren, with another on the way. Things worked out in the end. They worked out wonderfully,” she said.

  The room was quiet and stayed quiet. But then came a loud crack, and some jumped in their seats. Kareem and my mother were clapping. Others joined in, including the husband. Everyone came to the front and thanked the couple for the baking lesson and wrapped their loaves before taking them upstairs to their units.

  I held back, but Lizzie and Kareem saw me. Waving, fanning, they made their approach.

  “Ah!”

  “Hi Mum—”

  “Aahh!”

  “Mum, I just—”

  “AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

  “Prin, your mother said AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

  I rolled my eyes. I sighed. I shrugged my shoulders. None of it worked. It wasn’t supposed to work. This was old theatre between us. And it had been a while. And so I opened my mouth and, while the watchers cheered, my wild-winking mother fed me hot tufts of focaccia until I couldn’t say anything at all.

  And then she nodded, cordially, and left.

  She dropped her mother-face and left?

  I didn’t get the chance to fail to avoid telling her about falling off my bike in the valley?

  And since when did my mother have a face to drop?

  “You like the bread?” said Kareem.

  He’d stayed back.

  I swallowed.

  “Where’s my mother going?” I said.

  “Oh, Prin, you know, she’s very busy,” said Kareem.

  “Busy?”

  “That’s right! Just really busy, you know, with, with—”

  “With retirement?” I said.

  “You got it! But do you want me to text her for you? You want some more lamb? Maybe mint sauce this time?”

  “I can come get it—”

  “Just text me first, okay?”

  “I can call my mother directly, Kareem. And I can visit her when I want.”

  “Then go ahead. Call her. Go ahead. Visit her.” “Kareem?”

  “So you do want me to tell her you’re coming now?”

  “No.”

  “Okay Prin.”

  ***

  The hallway was empty now. I took the orange way to the elevators. After I’d first come back from Dragomans, my mother had counted my fingers and toes every time she saw me like when I was first born, as she told me and everyone else. Kareem had worn a fanny pack full of her prescriptions, “just for dealing with everything.” But after Molly and the children moved to Milwaukee my mother had only nodded, barely, at my explanations (The New U didn’t offer family-style suites for temporary residents; I needed to be here to check in on our home renovation; it was easier to homeschool in America; it was just easier). In front of others, she was, as ever, “the mother”: fighting back tears of pride and sorrow, Sri Lankan Tiger-Balm-Mom supreme. Otherwise? She had become cordial. My mother: Cordial.

  Of course she’d answer if I called her.

  It was a little nearer to five now. I took the elevator down to the gym.

  “Six thousand!”

  Kingsley was standing at centre court, pickleball racquets in both hands, giving instructions. His red warm-up suit looked a little baggy, or at least a little baggier than the last time I’d seen him wearing it. I waved. He came over.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Hi Dad. I thought I’d see if—”

  “But you’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be … aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else today?”

  “Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen. Hi, Prin. Listen, Kingsley, Luca’s varicose veins are killing him. We need a sixth to complete the rung on court three. Can your
son join us?”

  “Sure. I can do that. Could I borrow a—”

  “No. He can’t,” said Kingsley.

  The other players fell back.

  “Dad, I can play for a while before—”

  “Before what? Before you take another bike ride? At least a kid delivers the papers.”

  “I’m taking a break, actually. I had a fall, earlier today. I’m fine. Anyway, I just thought I’d say hi. You know, before—”

  “Before what? Before you do more of your ‘research’? A man your age, Prin, even after what happened, what happened to you … but this isn’t …”

  “Dad, I know what you’re trying to say. And you know I’m not allowed to teach as part of the settlement,” I said.

  “They’ve been down there for months! You can use my car if you want.”

  “Dad, I’ve told you, we discussed this before they moved. I’m going for Christmas, I’m definitely going for Christmas, and I’m thinking of asking her—”

  “Molly! Her name is Molly!”

  “I know my wife’s name.”

  “Okay. I’ll pay for the gas … and the oil.”

  “Dad, I appreciate what you’re trying to do.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Centre court is waiting for me.”

  “Okay then. I’ll come by later to watch the 6:30 news,” I said.

  “Dinner?”

  “Mom already fed me.”

  “She fed you? Or Halal Caesar fed you?”

  “I’m not hungry. Just a beer. Did you put them in the fridge this morning?”

  “Yes. Help me bag the empties when you come.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know what I think, Prin?”

  “No.”

  “I’m your father! I can tell!”

  “You can tell what?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “I’m going for Christmas! I’m renovating the house for them!”

  “No. You like it this way.”

  “What? I like it this way? I like this?”

  His lips trembled. He walked away.

  “Ten thousand steps! I did it!” an old voice called out from the track above us.